No Entangling Alliances
It was none other than George Washington who, in his farewell address before retiring to Mount Vernon, advised future presidents to pursue a policy of “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”
It was none other than George Washington who, in his farewell address before retiring to Mount Vernon, advised future presidents to pursue a policy of “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”
Inasmuch as it was James Madison and Alexander Hamilton who helped write the speech and Thomas Jefferson who would adopt the policy when he became president, there was obviously a meeting of the minds among the Founding Fathers that this was the basis of a rational foreign policy for the young nation.
It is an equally sound policy all these years later. Washington did put in a good word for temporary alliances in case of emergencies, but he saw no profit in tying America’s destiny to that of another country.
And yet, we have accumulated a vast number of treaties calling for mutual defense, but which, in reality, require that we come to the defense of nations all over the globe. And yet we can’t even count on more than a handful to vote on our behalf at the United Nations. Which is one of the reasons I, as president, would at least try to remove us from the U.N. It’s a waste of our money, and our presence only provides the corrupt organization with an aura of legitimacy it doesn’t deserve.
Next, I would resign from NATO. Again, it would save us a lot of money. But, even more importantly, it would invite the EU to protect the EU. The fact of the matter is that NATO was created to defend its members from attack by the Soviet Union. One, there is no longer a Soviet Union. There is only Russia, a nation with the GDP of Italy that hasn’t even been able to conquer Ukraine.
Also, NATO member Turkey is currently conducting military maneuvers with Russia and China and has just completed an oil pipeline with Russia. Word is Erdogan is wearing Putin’s letterman sweater and has already accepted his invitation to the prom.
If NATO doesn’t mind having a fox in its chicken coop, why should we? Besides, if I had to choose between the two, I’d side with Russia. At least, unlike Turkey, it’s not Islamic.
So, just who the heck are we protecting? I say if Luxembourg has its eyes on Monaco’s casino and yacht harbor, that’s Monaco’s problem.
Eric Hunter sent me a meme showing G.W. Bush bragging “I killed Saddam Hussein,” Barack Obama bragging “I killed Osama bin Laden,” Donald Trump bragging “I killed Qassim Soleimani” and Hillary Clinton bragging “I killed Jeffrey Epstein.”
I guess Sen. Mike Lee has given up the pretense of being a Republican, let alone a Conservative. First, he began shilling for the big tech companies and then claimed the administration’s briefing on the Soleimani assassination was “insulting and demeaning.” Inasmuch as Sen. Tom Cotton and sometime Trump critic Sen. Marco Rubio both said they were convinced by that same briefing suggests that Lee has gone over to the dark side. Apparently, the campaign contributions that have flooded into Utah to persuade him and the committee he chairs from deciding that Google, Facebook and Amazon, are in fact the monopolies we all know them to be, have had their desired effect.
It seems that Utah, a state that formerly boasted it was the most conservative state in the Union, is now represented by two RINOs named Mitt and Mike, which perhaps sounds like a vaudeville comedy act because it is a vaudeville comedy act. The fact it isn’t a funny one shouldn’t be a surprise. After all, you don’t find a lot of Mormons in the comedy business. Instead, people like Harry Reid, Mitt Romney and Mike Lee, make their mark in the far less competitive field of politics.
The bottom line is that nobody should have been asking if Soleimani planned any imminent attacks any more than they should have wondered whether Osama bin Laden had anything on his drawing board. Soleimani should have been taken out for the American blood he had spilled over the past 20 years.
The question people should have been asking is why George W. Bush and Barack Obama hadn’t eliminated him long before President Trump had to take care of unfinished business.
Democrats always talk about people who don’t know history being doomed to repeat it, but they themselves ignore the counsel of George Santayana on every occasion. Consider the fact that no sooner did the Iranian militia under Gen. Soleimani’s command kill an American and set siege to our embassy than Trump sent the general back to Tehran in a small box.
Or, consider that after holding 52 American hostages for 444 days, Iran released them on January 20, 1981. It wasn’t a coincidence that was the day Ronald Reagan took office. The Iranians knew what was in store for them once Reagan replaced lily-livered Jimmy Carter in the Oval Office.
What Democrats invariably fail to understand is that when a red line is drawn in the sand, you can either back off as Obama did or you can blow up whatever and whoever happens to be standing on the line at the time.
What Iran’s feeble rejoinder tells us is that in spite of the Ayatollah’s big talk, Iran is not looking to get into a war with the U.S. They don’t even want to take on Israel, which is much smaller and much closer than we are. The reason nobody should want Iran to get its hands on a nuclear bomb is because they could use it to threaten other countries in the Middle East or they could pass it along to their various stooges who’d be only too happy to carry it in a suitcase and set it off in London, Paris or Tokyo. The Ayatollah is in no rush to join Mohammad in Paradise but a lot of his suicidal disciples would be proud to be incinerated in the name of Allah.
Come to think of it, there was a certain divine irony in the fact that Iran fired about a dozen missiles into Iraq and failed to kill any Americans, but 50 Iranians were killed and another 200 seriously injured when the crowd stampeded at Soleimani’s memorial service. There has been no explanation for the stampede, but my guess is that somebody spotted a mouse wearing what appeared to be a yarmulke and it was enough to create a panic.
It was no surprise that none of our alleged allies stepped into the breech and warned Iran that an attack on Americans in Iraq would be regarded as an act of war. Yet another reason for us to remove ourselves from Europe. If anybody asks us why we’d leave the Germans, the French, the Swedes and the Italians, to fend for themselves, we could explain that George Washington told us it was the right thing to do.
Tucker Carlson used to test my patience by constantly inviting the insipid likes of Kathy Areu, Ethan Bearman, Chris Hahn, Eric Swalwell and Jessica Tarlov, on his show. But no sooner did their invitations tail off then he began inviting on Col. Doug McGregor (ret) every time Tucker sniffed impending war in the air, which is generally every other day. It’s a condition which might suggest to the afflicted that they have their nose checked out by a professional.
It is Tucker’s show and he can do whatever he likes, although emulating the boy who cried wolf is a quick way to lose one’s audience. But if I were Col. McGregor, I might consider turning down an occasional invitation because, more and more, he appears to be serving the same function for his host that Charlie McCarthy provided for Edgar Bergen and that Lamb Chop did for Shari Lewis.